The kids (on campus) are all right — despite the howls of the privileged

By Michael CorenOpinion

Tues., Sept. 4, 2018

In a few days I’m back at university. Yes, 59-years-old and about to start my third and final year of a Master of Divinity degree. After, that is, a hiatus of more than 35 years since attending two universities back in Britain.

So I’ve seen campus life decades apart, and for the life of me can’t understand the caricature painted by conservatives about the war on free speech, and the apparently terrifyingly left-wing nature of the contemporary Canadian college.

“I’ve seen campus life decades apart, and for the life of me can’t understand the caricature painted by conservatives about the war on free speech, and the apparently terrifyingly left-wing nature of the contemporary Canadian college,” writes Michael Coren. (Nakita Krucker / Toronto Star)

Yet if we believe the usual anti-social justice warriors, and what we could describe as their trans-Jordanian champions, it’s hell out there. An attack on pronouns, a threat to liberty, a massacre of right-wing ideas, and a ban on simple conversation.

In my experience, however, very little has changed. But no, actually some things have changed. It’s better.

When I first attended university, it was common for marginalized groups to be victims of discrimination and worse. That, thank God, is beginning to disappear. The truth is that most of these groups have been largely powerless and silent for almost their entire history, and now that they are speaking up and speaking out, they are condemned for being too rash and too loud.

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It’s also significant that the leadership of the reaction is often led by former liberals, who now that they see genuine change, are running to the hills; just like their neo-conservative allies a generation or two ago.

Of course there are excesses on the left because the revolution has to breathe. This is never acceptable, but surely understandable. But when this does occur, those on the right try to depict those extremes as the norm, and extend that conscious distortion to label entire movements and causes.

In Ontario, the Doug Ford administration has even entered the battle, explaining that, “Colleges and universities will have until January 1, 2019, to develop, implement and comply with a free speech policy that meets a minimum standard prescribed by the government and based on best practices from around the world.” This is a shorthand reference to the issues of abortion and Israel. But let’s give a little context here.

For most of the time since Israel’s foundation in 1948, Palestinians were routinely defined as terrorists, and those who offered any support for their plight slandered as anti-Semites. Today, it is true, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism sometimes, but only sometimes, horribly mingle. No Jewish student should ever feel intimidated on campus because of their faith, but then no Palestinian should fear being gagged because of their declaration of a national identity and aspirations.

On the abortion issue I, too, want rates to drop. As, frankly, do most people. Which is why we advocate modern sex education in schools, freely available contraceptives, public daycare, female empowerment and the fight against poverty. Yet the Ford administration has scrapped modern sex education and the basic income scheme, and condemned public daycare.

It’s vital to realize that these so-called anti-abortion protestors on campus want to make a woman’s choice illegal, thus endangering women’s lives, and also leading to all sorts of criminal prosecutions. Imagine a vulnerable, first-year female student walking past those demonstrators every day, listening to them shout and watching them wave enormous pictures of allegedly aborted, bloody fetuses.

As for trans students, their typical experience is not demanding their rights but avoiding kicks and insults, and trying to survive a hostile world that would often rather they disappear or die. The typical life of an Indigenous student is not arguing their case, but wondering why a settler people who took their land and promised so much in return then snatched them from their families, degraded their culture, and condemns them as extremists when they dare to resist.

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Common sense still prevails at most universities, as it does in most walks of life. I do believe that those who demand change need to do so with empathy and kindness, and that if we hate those we regard as oppressors rather than love those we regard as oppressed, we will surely lose our way.

But I’m so tired of the ceaseless pessimism of those whose privilege is finally being challenged. Times change comrade — perhaps go back to university and learn why.